


sacrament, sacrifice

by maypop



Category: Bottom of the River (Music Video), Bottom of the River - Delta Rae (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:36:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maypop/pseuds/maypop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just what the Hell is going on in this video?</p>
            </blockquote>





	sacrament, sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/gifts).



By tradition when she got to that certain age her family pulled her inside the house and kept her from the light of heaven, lest it shine off the mirror inside her and catch the eye of God. By tradition, the night they came, she wore child-white and a wide leather belt to keep her guts in eating shape, if everything went wrong, and of her own choice she put boots on, because the ground was getting cold.  
  
They hardly looked like her cousins, when they came with the chain and lanterns. She'd always said she wouldn't need to be dragged--what could there possibly be to regret?--but that, too, was tradition, and she learned why as she stumbled off the porch. The first gasp of moonlight in months hit like a shovel, slamming deep and throwing her high. Cousin Marla pulled her on.  
  
She regained her balance to see her brothers there by the fence, black eyes encouraging in the crowd of masked dancers. Somewhere underneath the moonlight that was filling her like blood filled a lung, she knew them, knew they were just family kids like her, who practiced in any field without too many stickers, but not now. Now they were faceless, eternal, a reminder of their power and pride--what they were would never be destroyed, even if she was.  
  
By now no one had to hold her arm. Her feet were slamming into the ground in perfect time, echoing and loud. All around, her family sang and danced and shouted, distracting the eyes of God as they did for every child that walked forth under the moon unprotected. Not a long walk. It was assumed you made your choice those endless dull days locked in the house, now was only the testing of it. Still, she was half drunk by the end of it, and her laughter came out deep, deep, deep, rolling out, bursting its banks like the water.  
  
The chains slipped off like they'd been greased, which was the first answer, that she would not be bound. The dancers flowed around her, and then she was at the circle. Her cousin Marla waited with her teeth bared and shoulders back, and beside her stood her own brothers, waiting to be allowed their violence. She walked into the circle under her own power with the wind pushing her hair back.  
  
"Who will take me to the water?" she called out. "Who will walk with me?"  
  
"Righteous Woman, turn back," Marla warned, the Hidden Woman warned. "If you go into the river, you forsake your destiny."  
  
"What destiny?" she asked the Hidden Woman, who had been Righteous in her time.  
  
"The Devil in you doesn't have to win," Marla said. "Turn back, Righteous Woman. Let God clean you. Be his instrument."  
  
In the end, everyone had the opportunity to turn away from sin. In the end, it was no choice at all.  
  
"I will be no one's instrument," she said. "And I am not Righteous."  
  
"Prove it," the Hidden Woman said, and she raised her finger to her lips, and the demon in her reached out and cast them all to the ground, dancers and witnesses and Hidden Woman all.  
  
Two lantern bearers remained, to take her down to the river where she would tarnish her soul's shine, and be safe from the will of God, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> "well, clearly a baptism for a family of demonic witches" I decided.


End file.
